Theory: The weapons that burned Owen and Beru Lars down to skeletons were simply blasters, ...

not disintegrators or flamethrowers.

Considering that the attack on the homestead was meant to look like being the work of the Tusken, who neither own nor use flamethrowers and especially not disintegrators, and we don't see both kind of weapons in the Sandtroopers arsenal for this mission, the most likely weapon that caused the condition of Owen and Beru's corpses are blasters.

Blasters were shown to be able to turn people into charred corpses a short time later in ANH, when we see Han shoot Greedo in the Mos Eisley cantina. Perhaps another reason for this scene, beside giving him a reason to travel with Obi Wan and Luke to Alderaan.

And why would Sandtroopers, trying to imitate a Tusken raid, give their victims a funeral? We never seen or heard about them doing this anywhere.

And simply burning along with the homestead also doesn't make sense, because the corpses lay outside and not in one of the destroyed rooms of the moisture farm.

So i think highly powered blaster fire from more than one Stormtrooper was the most likely cause for Owen and Beru Lars becoming charred skeletons.

 

I think they were shot inside the dwelling then the stormtroopers set fire to the place but Owen and Beru were still alive and tried to get out but died as they did.

cheerful eh?

 

I always just assumed the stormtroopers blasted them until they were charred skeletons and then set fire to the homestead.

Decades later (earlier) we see them fire on Aayla Secura AND KEEP FIRING so I assumed she ended up a charred skeleton as well.

 

I can't remember where I read this, but somewhere somebody wrote something about using a blaster on low power to slowly burn the flesh from the victim's bones. Does anyone else remember that?

 

It's in the Han Solo Adventures trilogy in Legends: book one: Han Solo at At Star's End:


“When the Espos came to evict us from our colony world,” she said slowly, “some Trianii tried armed resistance. The Espos were brutal in their interrogation of prisoners, seeking the ringleaders. It was the first time I had seen anyone use The Burning. You know what I refer to, Solo-Captain?”

Han did. The Burning was a torture involving the use of a blaster set at low power, to scorch and sear the flesh off a prisoner, leaving only blood-smeared bone. Usually, a leg would be first, immobilizing the victim; then the rest of the skeleton was exposed, inch by inch. Any other prisoners could be made to watch, to break their will. The Burning seldom failed to obtain answers, if answers were to be had; but in Han’s opinion, no being who employed such methods deserved to live.

“I will not leave my mate in the hands of the kind of people who would do that,” Atuarre was saying. “We are Trianii; death, if it comes to that, is not something we fear.”

 

Yeah, that's the one. The way it's described, I've always assumed it was describing what happened to Owen and Beru.

 

According to Daley, it was meant to explain what happened to Owen and Beru.

 

In this case, they wouldn't have been burned so much. There was nothing around them that could have kept the fire alive.

 

I did not need to read that. Thanks for that, Baz.

But, to the OP, this was an interesting question and it's sad it had to happen.

 

Bingo. Another scenario is that they were shot and fell right away, right outside the home. Their corpses were well within range of the flames from the burning homestead. I watched again. They were essentially in the ‘porch’ area of their home.

 

But they wouldn't burn down to skeletons if they were still in a condition to leave the burning area. If the fire was so strong to only leave burned bones as a result, the heat would have killed them, long before they were able to stumble out of the homestead.

And one of the corpses had the arms stretched out, like someone being threatened by a gun.

 

Has anyone actually ever asked Pablo Hidalgo about this issue?

 

Has anyone considered spontaneous human combustion? Granted, it's rather unlikely that two people would suddenly burst into flames, but maybe they lost the will to live...

 

Considering it's George, that's possible

 

Was it ever actually stated that the attack was meant to look like the work of Tuskens? The Jawa attack was, but if the Lars' homestead was meant to as well, that's only implied, as far as I know. In any case, the Imperials are already shown to be poor imitators of Tusken raiding parties— all they thought to do was ride a few banthas through the scene and scatter a couple gaffi sticks. They don't pepper the area with stray blast points or ride single file, and with a frame job that shoddy, I bet if you looked at the attackers' footprints for half a second you'd see the tread in the sole of their boots.

Also, we've seen in The Book of Boba Fett that Tuskens aren't the only raiders the townsfolk of Tatooine have to deal with. Gangs aplenty roam the sands laying waste to homesteads in similar fashion.

 

Yep, even though these gangs weren't invented for Tatooine in 1977, it would make sense in-universe that the stormies faked a biker gang attack on the moisture farm instead of a sandpeople raid.

 

I think the Stromtrooopers interrogated / tortured Owen and Beru. They burned their bodies to hide this.

 

I’m not sure their were biker gangs like that when the Empire and Jabba operated on Tatooine. It was less about protecting the farms and more about Jabba controlling who operated on Tatooine.

 

Sure there were biker gangs like that. They just all worked for Jabba.

 

By ‘like that’ I mean roving gangs of speeder riding marauders who would raid moister farms at their pleasure.

I’m not aware of any EU stories where Luke and his Skyhoper cruising friends contending with Biker Gangs taking over Toshie Station like we saw on Book of Boba Fett.

And we see on the Mandalorian that raiders showed up for the first time in Cobb Vance’s little one street town only after the events in Return of the Jedi.

This is what really happened to Owen and Beru.

 

This is what happened.

 

I think Beru left the oven on. Remember she was cooking that cabbage or corn stalk or whatever that was?

 

Flames wouldn't have burnt the bodies like that. Even if they used fire accelerators or sprinkled the bodies with fuel or something like that. The fire couldn't get big or hot enough to reduce them to skeletons. Even a constant stream from flame throwers couldn't do this imho.

There would be more charred flesh on the bones. This was no fire.

Of course it could be explained as a artistical decission by George, possibly to avoid a r-rating, but in-universe this explanation doesn't work.